Hptmn Kuno Manger released the remainder of his bomb load ineffectually in the countryside around Coventry then headed back to the coast at Great Yarmouth, where bad weather for a change helped protect her from the unwelcome attention of the fighters.
By 1918 a significant change to defence equipment was taking place. In order to combat the altitude advantage now enjoyed by Zeppelin airships and Gotha and Zeppelin-Staaken ‘Giant’ aeroplanes, quantities of Sopwith Camel, DH4 and SE5 fighters were diverted to Home Defence squadrons. Furthermore, specialist night fighters, such as a variant of the Sopwith Dolphin, were being tested. However, German aeroplanes had almost entirely taken over as the main bomber threat to England and air action was by now concentrated in the south and south-east of the country. A portent of years to come.
The Zeppelin menace reached a final climax in what became the last airship raid on England of the war, August 5/6 1918. Obsessed by his desire to re-establish the strategic credibility of his airship fleet, Fregattenkapitän Peter Strasser led this raid aboard the pride of his fleet, L70 (Kptlt Johannes von Lossnitzer in command).
Departing Nordholz at 15.30, this desire seems to have turned to impatience, since Strasser unwisely appeared off the Norfolk coast before darkness fell. Spotted early, off Wells-next-the-sea, at 20.00, L70 and its companion craft L65 and L53 were attacked by DH4 and Sopwith Camel aircraft at 18,000 feet just offshore. Two DH4s, A8032 piloted by Major Egbert Cadbury with Capt Robert Leckie acting as gunner and A8039, Lt R Keys with Air Mechanic A Harman, both from Great Yarmouth air station, quite separately attacked L70. So enormous was this Zeppelin that these two fighters were apparently completely unaware of each other’s attack. At 22.00 the effects of their incendiary ammunition had sealed the fate not only of the majestic airship but also of its crew of twenty-two men, including Strasser, who died along with his dream.
Primarily designed for bombing, the Great Yarmouth crews had found the two-seat DH4’s performance, when powered by a 375hp RR Eagle engine, effective at the altitudes at which the latest Zeppelins operated and could meet them on equal terms at last. Among the twenty-nine aeroplanes launched against raiders that night, FE2bs of 51 Squadron were airborne over the region but as none of the airships ventured inland, they found no trade. One, however, Lt Drummond from Mattishall in A5732, was obliged to make a forced landing at Skegness, fortunately without injury.
Although officially recorded as having crashed at 53.01N, 01.04E, because of darkness and cloud the true position of L70’s fiery plunge into the sea is unclear but appears to have been a few miles out to sea towards the mouth of The Wash. Next day major remains were found to have drifted onto sandbanks in The Wash in the vicinity of Skegness and Hunstanton. Witnessing from a distance the horrific end to L70, both companions turned tail for home and thus drew the night ‘shooting’ war in the region to a close.
It is not intended here to conduct a detailed analysis of WW1 air defence policy since other writers have dealt more than adequately with that subject. In the context of this account of one phase in the evolution of the night air defence of Britain, suffice it to say that airships represented German long-range bombing strategy of the time and the defenders were, for a long time, unable to contain them. They were thus, in theory, able to strike at any part of the British Isles. In practice, though, a degenerative cycle of circumstances brought about by factors such as: the sheer size of these weather-vane-like airships; perverse weather; poor navigation; limited radio aids and not least, intransigence among its leaders on the one side, opposed by steadily improving defensive aeroplanes, armament and searchlights on the other side – all severely curtailed the airship fleet’s effectiveness and caused it in effect, to self-destruct.
Of the 115 Zeppelins built:
25 were lost to enemy air or ground attack over England and the
continent
19 were damaged and wrecked on landing
26 were lost in accidents
22 were scrapped in service
7 were interned after being forced down
9 were handed over to the enemy at the end of the war
7 were ‘scuttled’ at the end of the war
About fifty crews were involved in German naval airship operations during the war and each crew could consist of up to eighteen airmen, so a total of no more than about 900 airmen made up the operational aircrew establishment, of whom about 400 lost their lives.
Just as in WW2, in this aspect of the enemy night offensive against England, the provinces outside the capital and the area around The Wash and Midlands in particular, saw a great deal more of the action than is generally appreciated. No less than eleven out of a total of fifty-four German airship raids on England (20%), directly or indirectly involved the region. Those particular eleven raids were mounted entirely by airships of the Imperial German Navy. Thus it has been shown here that the region felt the weight of this new form of warfare and aeroplanes based there played a small but important role in helping to defeat the menace. It will be seen next that, twenty-five years later, these provincial night skies would once more become a battleground – with a similar outcome for the protagonists.
CHAPTER 3
Fighter Nights
For night fighters in general, let alone in this region, the second half of 1940 was both a time of frustration and a time of change. Airborne radar was gradually being rolled out but like most electronic inventions, delivery was slow: it suffered teething problems; its air operators had to acquire a new skill that was largely self-taught and acquired ‘on the job’, and the aeroplane that carried it was not man enough for its task. Nevertheless, it was all that was available. Furthermore, according to E G Bowen, the man responsible for the government’s airborne radar development programme, the very future of airborne radar was precarious. In his book Radar Days he states:
As 1940 drew to a close, night fighters were simply not shooting down German aircraft at night and the very concept of using radar-equipped fighters for night interception came under criticism. The source of this criticism could not be clearly defined but it was undoubtedly fuelled by the nagging refrain from Lord Cherwell, who lost no opportunity of throwing spanners into the radar works. It gave rise to a whole host of competing ideas. One of these was the so-called Turbinlite … another was bombing the enemy from above; many other schemes were proposed … they were seldom thought through … and not one of them developed into a useful method of defence against night air attack.
As one of the efforts to plug the gap, in September 1940 Air Marshal Sholto Douglas, recently appointed C-in-C Fighter Command, ordered more use of single-engine fighters at night. In Years of Command, the second volume of his autobiography, he wrote:
The defeat of the German night bomber was clearly my first responsibility. I was convinced, as Dowding had been, that this airborne radar, linked with radar on the ground, would provide the answer but it [AI] was still too unstable and unreliable and control from the ground had not been worked out. The enemy might not oblige by waiting until the new equipment was ready. For these reasons I could not put all my eggs in one basket and I had to pay attention to other means of coping with the night raiders. So strongly had Dowding come to believe in his radar-equipped fighters that he had become a little blinded, I felt, to the more simple hit or miss, trial and error, use of single-engine fighters. I felt … that the effort should be made and despite his strenuous protest Dowding was given instructions to make more use of his Hurricanes and Defiants at night.
Based at RAF Digby, the sector HQ airfield, Hawker Hurricane-equipped 151 Squadron was re-designated from day fighter to night fighter squadron on October 20 1940 and in this new role it was to operate from the Wellingore satellite landing ground. The squadron was ordered to provide one section of aircraft at readiness all night, and one section at readiness and another at fifteen minutes availability all day. Night readiness duty was to be carried out alternately by the squadron’s two flights on a weekly rotation basis.
On October 2 though, just before this change of status, another Smith for 151 Squadron had better luck and incidentally displayed a streak of mettle that would lead him to command the squadron in less than eighteen months’ time. Just as dusk was beginning to set in, New Zealander Plt Off Irving Smith, leading Red section on a local practice sortie, was ordered to intercept an outbound enemy aircraft heading towards The Wash. As Red 2 was not yet operational Smith instructed him to return to base and was himself vectored to the enemy. Climbing above the cloud layer, as soon as he emerged he spotted the enemy aircraft – a Heinkel He111 – dead ahead of him. Closing rapidly, Smith fired a single long burst of gunfire at his target, which promptly dived into the cloud cover with the Hurricane in hot pursuit. Firing the remainder of his ammunition at the fleeing Heinkel he was rewarded by seeing the port propeller windmill come to a stop. The Heinkel seemed able to maintain height and flew out to sea for about twenty miles with Plt Off Smith keeping station on it at a discrete distance. It soon became quite evident that it was beginning to lose height and it must have become apparent to its pilot that he was not going to make it back to base, because the bomber turned round and retraced its course towards the coast. Approaching the coast its starboard motor began to burn and the aircraft glided down to ‘pancake’ on the sea about two or three hundred yards from the beach at Chapel St Leonards, just north of Skegness. Circling his victim for a while he watched the crew swim ashore into captivity; Smith landed back at Digby at 18.50 hours. The story goes that when soldiers arrived on the scene the Heinkel was partially submerged in the shallows and its crew were standing on the wing calling out for a boat to bring them off. In no uncertain terms the shout went back, “Swim for it or b----y well drown!!” Having survived the ditching unharmed the crew, Oblt H Seidel, Ofws K Ziller, W Zickler and V Weidner together with Uffz A Kreuzer, took the cold plunge into captivity. Their Heinkel was later identified as He111H-5, wk nr 3554, coded A1+CH of I/KG53, out on a lone reconnaissance sortie when it was shot down.
Left where it crashed just offshore the bomber gradually succumbed to the ravages of the North Sea. Substantial components from this wreck, including both engines, were recovered in 1967 and displayed in the Lincolnshire Air Museum and Newark Air Museum. The large centre section structure remained embedded in the beach, laid bare by tidal action and proving to be something of a hazard until it, too, was removed after being blown up into smaller pieces by the navy in 1973.
On November 7, Flt Lt Kenneth Blair (A Flight commander) took off after a Heinkel 111 that had laid a stick of bombs across Digby and machine-gunned some parked Hurricanes but he, too, had to return without catching his quarry. A couple of days later though, Blair and Sgt Percy Copeland on a dawn patrol over The Wash intercepted a Dornier Do17 at 08.00 and claimed to have shot it down between them. As Red section they took off from Digby at 07.20 to patrol below cloud over Skegness and half an hour later Flt Lt Blair (Red 1) was warned of a bandit approaching from the north at 7,000 feet altitude. Blair wrote in his combat report:
I climbed up and suddenly above a layer of thin cloud a Do17 appeared flying south. I gave chase and fired my ammunition at it in six bursts from two to three hundred yards range as it flew in and out of a thin cloud layer. When at 5,000 feet the E/A half-rolled and dived towards the ground and I then called Red 2 [Copeland] to come in and shoot. I could see my explosive ammunition bursting on the E/A and thought I had damaged it. Red section returned to base, landing at 08.30.
Sgt Percy Copeland’s own report noted that he could see the Heinkel’s rear gunner returning fire as Blair went in and he himself put in a short burst from the other beam. When the Heinkel dived, Red 1 broke away but Copeland stayed with it long enough to close the range from 300 to 100 yards while firing two more bursts. By now the rear gunner had stopped firing but Copeland lost contact as the rapidly diving fight reached ground level.
Kenneth Blair claimed a probable jointly with Sgt Copeland, but both combat reports were endorsed, “Since confirmed as destroyed.” Post-war research established however that, while sustaining battle damage, this Do17 actually made it back to base at Gilze-Rijen, in Holland, although two of the crew had been wounded during the action.
It was not until November 16 that 151 Squadron began flying night patrols in earnest and this task was actually carried out by sending a detachment of nine Hurricanes to RAF Wittering. At this time only seven pilots had been trained and passed for night ops but no action came their way before the end of the month.
December 1940 saw more organisational changes for 151. The squadron itself moved from Wellingore to RAF Bramcote in Warwickshire, but at the same time a whole flight was detached to Wittering for night operations. Initially that detachment was a composite unit made up of pilots drawn from both flights but it was intended, when all pilots were night-trained, to rotate A and B Flights for the detachments. The flight remaining at Bramcote would carry out daytime operational training and maintain daytime patrols. This dual role placed a strain both on the Hurricanes and their pilots and in mid-month the first seven, (of an expected complement of ten), Boulton Paul Defiants were taken on charge specifically for night operations. In addition the full complement of eighteen Hurricanes was to be retained for daytime ops. In the meantime Group also decreed that twelve aircraft – Hurricanes, because the Defiants were not yet ready – had to be sent on the Wittering detachment, causing their diarist to complain: “…that practically all the squadron is at RAF Wittering now.”
In its efforts to bring the Luftwaffe to battle at night, RAF Command concocted many bright (!) ideas as alternatives to AI radar, or until it became more prolifically available and in mid December 151 Squadron became involved with one such scheme called ‘Night Flying Curtains’. This technique involved stacking nine aircraft at intervals of 1,000 feet altitude, with the lowest at between 11,000 and 14,000 feet. The idea was to move these aircraft around the night sky in a block and thus “… to be sure of intercepting German night bombers.” 151 practised this in clear daylight conditions and it worked without a hitch and was even considered to show great promise. This feeling did not persist though after more ‘Curtain’ practices, this time in cloudy conditions, caused problems to such an extent that it was agreed the technique would not be used in anything less than perfect weather.
Two days before Christmas 151 Squadron upped and moved entirely to RAF Wittering where as the year finally came to an end there was just a small amount of local night flying training carried out by the Defiant crews. For all squadron personnel it must have seemed during this period as if nothing was ever going to stay still long enough to concentrate on getting to grips with the Luftwaffe. Just to add to its woes, the squadron was ordered to donate five of its Hurricanes to the newly formed 71 (Eagle) Squadron at Kirton in Lindsey.
Even if 151 was not engaging the enemy, the enemy was taking potshots at 151! On December 21 one pilot was fired upon as he came into land after a night patrol while another was shot at during his patrol. Neither pilot saw his attacker but fortunately both emerged unscathed.
The New Year brought no sign of stability either, as three Hurricanes were detached on January 4 to RAF Kirton in Lindsey with their pilots: Flt Lt Kenneth Blair, Plt Off Irving Smith and Plt Off Richard Stevens. On the same night Blair intercepted an enemy aircraft actually in the RAF Waddington circuit at 600 feet, but it got away again.
January 1941 saw 151 Squadron begin mounting the type of night sortie known as a ‘Fighter Night’. These patrols were night flights inv
olving pilots considered, by the squadron commander, to have acquired above average skills both in combat and flying at night. Fighter Nights were launched when raid activity threatened and/or there was a reasonable amount of light from the moon. Up to now many single-seat fighter pilots had little experience of night flying and could not simply be pitched into an environment and situation where they would be more danger to themselves than the enemy. Night flying training therefore began to increase on those squadrons affected. Individual single-seat or non-AI equipped fighters would be allocated to a city or part of, say, a large urban conurbation by their sector control and be despatched at intervals depending on the intensity of enemy activity. Proceeding to his designated area, he would commence patrolling at a pre-determined altitude and it was then up to the pilot to use signs offered by AA or searchlights, together with his own initiative to try to spot an enemy aircraft and bring it into combat. What happened thereafter was up to the pilot – and the enemy! 151 Squadron recorded that it used this technique for the first time on the night of January 9 1941 when nine Hurricanes were sent off from Wittering. Unfortunately they had to be recalled due to deteriorating weather so it was not possible to judge the merits of the technique on that occasion. There was a little consolation, though, when the AOC sent congratulations to the squadron for getting all nine aircraft airborne within the space of five minutes from receiving the signal. It seems reasonable to view subsequent Luftwaffe night fighter operations known as ‘Wilde Sau’ as similar in concept to Fighter Nights.
No Place for Chivalry Page 6